Happy New Year & 2006 Forecast & Plans

Happy New Year everyone!

I truly hope that you have a prosperous and most of all healthy 2006. Thanks for spending a little time and paying attention to what I'm trying to do here. While the personal health problems for my family were a bit overwhelming at times in 2005, the business side couldn't have been better - until 2006 of course. So I'd say the year was mixed but I'm a happy person and knock on wood, the health problems are under control.

So this blog entry will be both my 2006 likely plans focused on the podcast thinking (subject to change with notice, or on a whim, or with an opportunity that requires me to make a change) and my forecasts for the industry for 2006 - which you will see in various other places like CRMGuru and SearchCRM in bits and pieces too. First the forecast, in case you don't want to indulge my self-indulgence (a.k.a. my podcast plans) Now lets get down to it on what's planned here and I WANT FEEDBACK - Please. Please. I'm a proud man but you've got me on my knees, I'm begging you - please. FEEDBACK!!! Thank you, very much.By the way, that can be feedback on my forecast telling me yours or why I'm full of crap and/or on the podcast plans.

Deck the Blog with Boughs of Challah - 2006

No, I'm not making the blog a forum for my religion. But I have a lot of plans for the year and a lot of forecasts for what I think is going to happen this year. I was about 90% right last year on CRMGuru. But if you think I'm offbase with the forecasts or have something that I can do that fits better than what I'm planning or should do but I'm a dork for forgetting, then let me know. I'm going to be as brief as I can since I'm not trying to be a narcissist here (well, maybe a little...since I'm presuming you even give a crap about my plans...), but it takes 20 minutes for a New Yorker (ex- or otherwise) just to say hello (as you can see by the length of this introduction to the content).

First the 2006 trends....

The Future's Not Hard To See

• The customer experience with products, services and the company providing them will be THE foundation for CRM going forward and will be increasingly a consideration for corporate strategies. Metrics, which are few and far between for this, will be developed to measure the success of the customer experience and the idea that value resides with the customer will be the critical idea that sticks in 2006 and beyond. CRM as we knew it will disappear by the end of the 2008.
• CRM On Demand will become pre-eminent and though on-premise vendors will continue to survive, On Demand solutions for the enterprise and as a platform will be how most companies considering IT investments and system investments will go. However, the on demand functionality will still not be as complete as on premise by year end, though that won't matter.
• The open source movement and companies like SugarCRM will become a viable solution and a credible competition to the On Demand market. 2006 will be the year that open source CRM establishes itself as a solid alternative.
• CRM will increasingly be integrated with strategies for social networking and at the application level with social networking tools like podcasting, blogs, and wikis in addition to the harder core social networking applications such as LinkedIn.
• While Microsoft will continue to expand its push to compete with salesforce.com using Microsoft Dynamics 3.0, unless they change their current strategy, their attempt to be a dominant player in the enterprise applications world will continue to seem separate from their Vista, Live Office and other initiatives - and they will gain little in the market. I hope I'm wrong about this one, but I don't see their current messaging working very well in a marketplace with players like salesforce.com or Sage or Oracle. They have yet to show me how Windows Mobile 5.0 and CRM 3.0 work together just wonderfully - if they do.
• Given the extensive gutting via departure of the Siebel senior management and the middle managers, and Oracle's known cultural difficulties, the Oracle absorption of Siebel will hit some possibly very serious unexpected snags. Now THAT sounds intriguing doesn't it?
• This is going to be the year that mobile CRM makes a huge difference. Companies that get this and understand that RSS is very very important will be fly, dawg. Or, if you are of an older generation, will fly sky high if they can stay ahead of or even on the curve.
• Composite applications will become one of the buzz apps and services of the year 2006. But it will still take a bit of a learning curve for companies to figure out what they are or how to look at it beyond just saving legacy systems cost. Are they middleware? Are they SOA? Are they an old guy in a new suit? Stay tuned...though it will be at least more obvious, Cato, before the year is out.




The Plans

I'm going to focus most on the podcast because I have the segments that will be included and I want to see what y'all think about it. Suffice to say, expect to read more about Rutgers CRM Research Center, the CRM Association, changes in the blog, BPT Partners and videoblogs by mid year or a bit later. The Empire Strikes Forward.

The Podcast

It's called, "You Are What You Eat (YAWYE)." The idea of the title is that ultimately the customer wants to be treated well and you're a consumer in addition to being a producer so therefore....Get it? Lame? Cool? Let me know. Also, do me a big favor and take the micropoll below so that I can figure out which segments to emphasize and feel free to leave comments (not droppings) on the blog if you have other ideas. The game plan initially will be twice a month or every other week (24 or 26 times a year) and then hopefully when I can - weekly. YAWYE will begin in early February for when I return from Hong Kong and Singapore (watch the blog for some what might be very cool details). I'm going to do it for about a 1/2 hour. What will happen will be something like this with of course license to not do any of this implied. Creative license of course:


1. Music intro that will be geared to the mood of the show. For example, acid rock or heavy metal for an aggressive, edgy show; or classical music for a show on "classic" CRM; or electric blues that for a show that moves quickly and smoothly through the material without heavy edges but fastmoving.


2. A New York Five Minutes- The opening segment is me shooting my New Yorky mouth off about CRM related items in the news - Don't have a name for it yet.


3. Up Close and Personal- Interviews CRM management that will not be about the executive's company but about themselves personally (I'm sure the company will come up since they, like most of us, are in some ways wedded to their work).


4. CRM at the Speed of Light, 4th Edition - Full length feature on some topic of interest - Educational, conceptual. So for example, it might a presentation on composite apps or something that would have been in the eternally phantom 4th edition of my book.


5. Steppin' Out - More technically, CRM related software and service company reviews like Steppin' Out was in the 3rd Edition of the book. Didn't read that book so you don't know what I'm talking about. Heh. Heh. Tough luck. Guess you'll have to buy the book to end the suspense...
   
6. I Can't Dance - This one will be cool. I'm going to be able to gadfly it up and go after a company or management team or management person who screwed up royally by with something particularly customer unfriendly or incompetent. The theme song for this will be a Creative Commons licensed song I found called "I Can't Dance (That's why I'm with the band)."


7. On the Hot Seat- A ESPN-like "on the hot seat" segment where a CRM industry leader gets 5-10 minutes of heavy duty tough questions thrown at them that make them squirm or fight back. This is for the combative ones.


8. The Indies- A complete playing of a cool, metaphorically related indie song that I find from time to time. The song would have some relationship (ironic most likely) with a CRMish theme.This would take 2-4 minutes.


9. You Take It Away - Guest broadcasters every now and then who can own the show segment and do what they want


10. On the Front- Regular ol' interviews from the field. For example, I'm heading out to do some BPT training and some independent major meetings in Singapore and Hong Kong in mid January and will take along a portable digital recorder and mike to do some interviews that I will eventually play on the podcasts with interesting CRM folks.
    
11. Don't I Wish - The comedy of Mitch Hedberg. Yeah, don't I wish. That man was an awesome comedic talent. But wishful thinking is all I get for this segment.

Okay to close all this blather out, can you do me a big favor and answer this micropoll? Of all the segments, which three make you all hot and bothered? Please use the titles and descriptions in the paragraphs above to identify the segment names. By the way, they are all working names and can be changed to something far more ironic, satiric or simply smarter. If you have suggestions on changes to the Podcast or features you'd like to see, please submit them as comments to the entry. This would help a lot. The best suggestions will get $25 gift certificates to Amazon if I use them in the podcast. I will know right away whether or not I will and will let you know via email that you'll be getting the gift certificate. The only criteria is that it HAS to be submitted as a comment not as an email to me privately.

Comments

[Dennis Howlett]

I'd certainly be thinking about the impact of mobile RSS.